1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a monitoring apparatus, a monitoring system, and a monitoring method for dynamically monitoring a risk of an internal crime inside a workplace, such as a company.
2. Background Art
In places such as companies, an internal crime by an employee often raises a problem. The internal crime is defined as an act of stealing assets inside a workplace, such as money, equipment, commodities, and information, by an employee who has authorized access to the workplace. According to penal modi operandi of thief, the internal crime is classified into an employee theft and a workplace theft. The employee theft is an act of stealing money and goods of the employer by an employee in a store. The workplace theft is an act of stealing money and goods from a workplace by an employee of a company. The employee theft and the workplace theft are referred to collectively as “crime targeting workplace”. According to the National Police Agency in Japan, the number of internal crime cases (crimes targeting workplace) has more than doubled to 2251 in 2005 from 1008 in 1998.
Under these circumstances, workplaces such as companies are now constructing a security system by introducing various types of security devices to protect the assets, such as money and equipment, against an internal crime. A risk management for taking an action appropriately by assessing a risk that can cause a loss of assets is now put into operation. In the risk management system in the related art, however, information about a risk is inputted manually. This makes it impossible to understand the state of a risk in real time. Accordingly, in the event that a crucial risk that can lead to an internal crime is occurring, an action against the risk is taken too late and assets will be stolen.
JP-A-2006-92312 describes a device configured to find out a crime probability in a desired area with ease and high accuracy by computing a crime probability on the basis of a value, which is found by dividing a distance to the nearest station by the number of workplaces in a specific area, and another value, which is found by dividing the population by the number of employees, and displaying the crime probability thus computed.
With the device described in this reference, it is easy to understand a static risk under a particular condition. However, because the device is not configured so as to monitor the situation of a risk that changes from moment to moment in real time, there is a problem that a risk of an internal crime corresponding to a change in the environment cannot be determined dynamically.
JP-A-2006-134242 describes a system configured to provide various services, such as notifying a lost article, by reading information of RFIC tags attached to articles or individuals using a tag reader and determining the situation of articles or the relation between the articles and individuals on the basis of the information thus read. This reference, however, fails to disclose the use of this system for dynamically monitoring a risk of an internal crime inside a workplace to calculate the risk quantitatively.
As has been described, there is no system in the related art that is capable of dynamically monitoring a risk of an internal crime inside a workplace to enable an action to be taken appropriately.